Biography:I’ve
been backpacking for about 11
years.I used to pack HEAVY, but then I
had kids.So to bring them backpacking I
reduced my pack weight drastically, and I’m now a quasi-ultralighter
(roughly
11 lbs/5 kg solo base pack weight).I
sew some of my own gear (tarps, tents, down jacket).I mostly backpack in the mountains &
deserts of southern California,
with occasional jaunts to adjacent states.

Product Description:An ultraviolet light water
purifying wand. The wand itself is 6.1 in/15.5 cm long and 1.5 in/3.8
cm wide. At one end is a UV light bulb, which has a detachable plastic
cover that matches the handle of the wand. The Adventurer is powered
by two CR123A batteries (two lithium CR123A's are provided with
the Adventurer). I am also testing the solar battery charging
accessory,
which measures 7 in/17.8 cm long by 1.25 in/3 cm high by 3.75 in/9.5 cm
wide. The battery charger doubles as a hard case in which the
Adventurer can be stored, and has a neoprene carrying case with a daisy
chain on the back, which allows it to be attached to a pack in order to
charge on the go.

The charging case (open) at top left,
wand and cap in center, neoprene case on right,
and nylon carrying case on
bottom left.

Initial
Report - December 8, 2006

I've only
used ceramic filters (MSR Miniworks & EX) and chemical treatment
(iodine, Aqua Mira) to treat my water. Compared to those, the SteriPEN
concept seems like science fiction – didn't they do this on Star
Trek? The wand's UV light renders viruses and other "bugs" in the
water unable to reproduce.

I immediately tried the Adventurer out in a bottle of tap water (I
didn't have ready access to a "wild" water source). I did it in a
darkened room in order to better observe the UV light. The light is
blue and glows softly in the water. The bulb must be completely
submerged in water in order to work, and must stay in the water until
the light shuts off. For treating less than 16 oz/0.5 L of water, the
sterilization time is 45 seconds. For testing between 16 oz/0.5 L and
32 oz/1 L, the sterilization time is around 1 minute and 27 seconds.
SteriPEN suggests gently swishing the wand in the water during the
sterilization process, which can cause a bit of water to slosh out of
the top of the bottle if the bottle is close to full. The only problem
I have had so far is that sometimes the starter button doesn't register
that I have pressed it twice (one press for 1 liter, two presses for
0.5 liters), and so when that happens the UV light shines about twice
as long as is necessary. On the handle, the button is labeled as
such: "Push twice for 0.5 L Push once for 1 L."
Once the button has been pushed, a small green indicator light comes on
and blinks, meaning the wand is ready to be placed in the water.

The treatment causes no visible or taste-able change to the water. The
process is silent, but puts off a fair amount of light and is very
visible in dark conditions.

There is no pre-filter included with the Adventurer, so I will either
have to drop $13 US on the SteriPEN brand pre-filter, or else play
around with using a bandanna or something else as a filter. Some of my
water sources will have debris and leaves floating in them, and others
may have fine-grained silt, so some kind of pre-filtering will be
necessary.

The solar charger unit is interesting. The lid is hinged and the
hinge is designed so that the lid can sit open at a 45, 90, 135 or
180-degree angle. This is a cool accessory, but there is a
caveat. According to the product literature, using solar power will
take two days to fully recharge batteries under optimal conditions.
Under less than ideal solar conditions, charging could take as long as
5 days (or longer under very poor conditions). For quick weekend trips
this isn't an issue, but for longer hikes, like the Pacific Crest
Trail, a backup pair of batteries (1.2 oz/34 g for the pair) in
addition to the charger might be advisable. There is also a plug-in AC
adaptor for at-home charging.

The Adventurer has proven to
be a tough item to test - not because of any problems with the unit
itself, but because we are currently having the driest winter ever on
record. As of the beginning of February, we had less than 20% of what
our average rainfall usually is by then. Creeks that should be
running in flood by now were so dry the creekbeds cracked.
I've gone on hikes every week, carrying the Adventurer and hoping to
find water, but still carrying all the water I'll need because I know
the chances of finding water are so remote. I did find water on
two of these hikes - in the holding tank at Pigeon Spring (San Mateo
Canyon
Wilderness, in the Santa Ana mountains) and in lower Borrego Creek
(Whiting Ranch Park, Orange County California). Unfortunately,
the water at Pigeon Spring was clouded and smelled horrible, and the
water in lower Borrego Creek was suburban runoff. I simply
couldn't work up the courage to drink from those sources. There
is a certain mental bias at work here as well - when I actually see water passing through some sort
of filtration device, I have to believe that some of the disgusting
stuff in the water (in addition to the parasites) is being removed.
With the Adventurer, I know that the "bugs" in the water are being
neutralized, but nothing has actually been removed. This may be slightly
irrational, but it was enough to dissuade me from drinking the water in
Borrego Creek, which I knew had to have pesticides, motor oil and soap
in it in
addition to any "bugs." The water at Pigeon Spring was what I
call
desperation water - only if I was in danger of death by
dehydration. I would have been loathe to drink it even with a
traditional filter.

But finally, within the last 10 days, we have had some rain. I
dashed out in a desperate attempt to find water in the wilds. I
found a small stream, dipped my bottle, pushed the button on the
Adventurer, placed it in the bottle to treat the water - and then the
battery died. I had made a test run on some water at home the
night before, in order to make sure the batteries still had juice, but
apparently they had only enough juice for the test run. Well, I
had brought enough backup water that I wasn't in any trouble, but I did
bring the "wild" water home so that I could treat it (after putting
fresh batteries in the Adventurer), drink it, and offer myself up as a
human guinea-pig. Hydro-Photon (the manufacturer of the
Adventurer) was kind enough to supply me with an extra set of
rechargable Lithium CR123A batteries, which were very easy to put in
and worked right away. Since the Adventurer has been very lightly
used in the last two months (though not for lack of trying), I must
draw the conclusion that it is draining some energy out of the
batteries even when not being used. I wonder if storing the
Adventurer with the batteries removed is a better idea. I'll be
trying this in the next two months.

I have found one problem with using the Steripen
Adventurer so far. As a quasi-ultralighter, I have ditched heavy
Nalgene-style quart/liter bottles, which weigh around 6 oz/170g, in
favor of re-used Gatorade or Vitaminwater bottles, which also hold a
quart but instead weigh around 1.5 oz/42.5 g. The problem here is
that so far I have not been able to find a re-used, quart-size bottle
whose opening is wide enough for the Adventurer to fit through!
The Adventurer fits through the opening in a standard Nalgene
quart/liter bottle with no problems, but rather than go back to
carrying those I have elected to use a Nalgene Cantene, which has a
wide opening but is lighter than the standard polycarbonate Nalgene
bottles. The problem with this is that a water source has to be
deep enough that I can dip the bottle in to fill it up. Very
small creeks present a problem, as it is impossible to dip a bottle
deep enough. I used a bandanna as a pre-filter, and because of
the
shallowness of the water there was simply not enough pressure to push
water through the bandanna and into the bottle. If I had been
carrying a small cup, I could have dipped the cup and then poured water
through the bandanna and into the Cantene. It seems I've
inadvertently stumbled onto the most clumsy way to use the Adventurer,
and I'll have to keep experimenting to see which water containers &
pre-filters work best overall.

However, I'm not giving up hope. This is a new process, a new
technology for me, and so it's not surprising that I have to re-think
the process of how I carry & treat water. The benefits of the
Adventurer (light weight, speed of treatment) make it, in my opinion,
worth the learning curve. Look for my Long term Report here in
early May 2007.

Long-Term Report - May 1, 2007

Unfortunately, we have not had much more rain since I filed my Field
Report. So even though I have spent numerous hours on the trail
during the test period, I have been able to find suitable wild water
exactly three times during the course of my testing. So even
though I can't report on much actual outdoor use, I have been
experimenting with the Adventurer & the battery charging unit at
home, and this is where most of the test data will come from.

First, I have
worked out a system that I am more or less pleased with for using the
Adventurer. I took a quart-size Gatorade bottle (which the
Adventurer will not fit into) and cut the neck off at a point where the
bottle is large enough to allow the Adventurer to be inserted into the
water. I can treat almost a whole quart in the bottle, and the
altered bottle itself weighs only 1.1 oz/31 g. I carry it on the
outside of
my pack with a heavy-duty ponytail elastic and a mini carabiner (which
I carry anyway).
I also use the ponytail elastic to hold a bandanna in place over the
opening when I need to pre-filter the water.

The biggest problem I have found with field use of the Adventurer is
that most of my local water sources tend to be very small & shallow
streams, and it is difficult to scoop up anything close to a full
liter. The last stream was so small that I had to disturb the
streambed and dig a small hole in order to dip the bottle deep enough
to get even half of the bottle full. I may have to resort to
carrying two treatment bottles - one to scoop up water, and one to
collect water in for treatment.

Another problem is battery consumption. Remember, all of my
testing was done with Tenergy brand rechargeable lithium 750mAh CR123A
batteries. I have been told that 900mAh batteries have proven to be
much more reliable than the 750mAh's, but I have tested the Adventurer
with the batteries that were provided to me by the manufacturer. The
Adventurer definitely drains the batteries even when not being used,
and it seems to do this very quickly. I stopped storing the
Adventurer with the batteries in, because without fail the batteries
were dead or close to it every time I went to use it after it being put
away for a couple of weeks. I would actually recommend only
putting the batteries in when the Adventurer needs to be used, then
taking them back out again, as even this tiny bit of energy savings
could net one additional treatment before needing to replace the
batteries. When using the Adventurer repeatedly
the batteries get hot to the touch - not hot enough to burn, but enough
so that even the outside top of the Adventurer is noticeably hotter
than the rest of the unit. I have also found that the
rechargeable batteries do not provide as many uses per charge as
claimed in the Adventurer literature. In my test runs, I have
never been able to get more than 20 liter-dose uses out of a charged
pair of batteries.

Aside from the battery issues, the only other problem I have
encountered is purely theoretical. There is a small o-ring that
forms a seal where the battery compartment lid comes off. This
o-ring sometimes gets twisted while the lid is off. Very easy to
fix,
but something that users should keep an eye out for as it could
potentially make it easier for water to get into the battery
compartment. The Adventurer is made to be placed in water, but
the instructions request that it not be completely immersed.

Finally, a purely cosmetic note. The matte finish on the black
portions of the Adventurer has begun to chip off in a few places,
revealing a shinier black finish underneath. Also, the black
finish on the ring around the screw that holds the battery compartment
in place has begin to chip just a bit, revealing the yellow finish
underneath.

Pros: fast, light, small,
effective, no taste

Cons: battery
consumption, o-ring tends to twist (easily fixed, but requires some
diligence), ineffective in clouded or almost freezing water, deeper
water sources are more convenient for this kind of water treatment

Thanks to Hydro-Photon and Backpackgeartest.org
for the opportunity to test this fascinating bit of technology.

Product tested and reviewed in each Formal Test Report has been provided free of charge by the manufacturer to BackpackGearTest.org. Upon completion of the Test Series the writer is permitted to keep the product. Owner Reviews are based on product owned by the reviewer personally unless otherwise noted.